3 Great Social Media Lessons From BlogWorld

I had high expectations for three of the sessions at BlogWorld Expo NY this week. They did not disappoint.Allow me to share with you a bit of what I learned from mom bloggers and the #ToyotaFail; Facebook wall moderation after a comment attack; plus News Feed Optimization — perhaps the most public secret in Facebook marketing success.From the first professional conference I've attended where a session audience gasped. Twice.

I had high expectations for three of the sessions at BlogWorld Expo NY this week. And they did not disappoint.

Allow me to share with you a bit of what I learned about managing (and avoiding) a social media PR crisis, responding to attack comments on your owned media and how, without the appropriate metrics, you’re marketing blind. We’ll look at mom bloggers and the #ToyotaFail; Facebook wall moderation after a comment attack; plus News Feed Optimization — perhaps the most public secret in Facebook marketing success.

From the first professional conference I’ve attended where a session audience gasped. Twice.

#ToyotaFail: The Crisis that Wasn’t

Earlier this year, a campaign surfaced to encourage mom bloggers to promote Toyota, providing a $10 Amazon gift card as an incentive. Whether this was originated by Toyota, its PR agency or a misguided blogger remains a matter of discussion. When the story got out, there was a wildfire of negative tweets using the #toyotafail hashtag, some admonishing Toyota for “bribing” bloggers and others admonishing the company for devaluing mom bloggers by offing them insufficient compensation.

Toyota acted rapidly. The company embraced the situation, didn’t freak out (at least, not publicly) and managed to co-opt it. Not only was the negative sentiment quelled, it quickly turned positive.

The panel explored the frequent failure of brands and agencies to adequately plan their blogger outreach. This, unfortunately, places burdens on time-constrained, well-intentioned bloggers to validate the credibility of the pitches they receive often without the experience or knowledge to do so properly.

You can access the presentation deck for takeaways from each of the four, insightful presenters. I suggest if you are pressed for time, grab the deck now so you don’t forget. Here are some tweetable points made during the session:

If there is negative sentiment out there on your brand, don’t miss the chance to turn it around.

The social media spotlight, good or bad, is a marketing opportunity. Take advantage of it.

It’s essential for brands to speak with bloggers. The bloggers are going to talk about you anyway.

Know when to take conversation offline. If solving the problem happens off line, don’t forget to post online to close the loop for those following the conversation.

How Brands Should Respond to Facebook Attacks

While inappropriate posts to Intel’s Facebook Page are deleted in accordance with policy cited on the Page, negative posts are generally let stand. When people from outside its usual community attacked its page with a barrage of negative posts a few months ago, the situation became so severe that deleting the posts was insufficient and the decision was made to deny all user submitted posts for a short period of time.

There were no long-term consequences for Intel’s Facebook community after things were stabilized. Here are some lessons learned that Walter shared — others are available from her presentation and an in-depth post on Fast Company.

Research reveals that it is easier to convert those who are negative about a brand to loyalists than those who are “neutralists.”

Hire and train community managers to keep peace by maintaining a conversational balance.

Form a crisis management team for situations that escalate above those the community managers are empowered to handle. The team should be able to assemble and act within hours.

If appropriate, take the conversation somewhere else. Or walk away from it.

Why Facebook News Feed Optimization Matters to Marketers

It does not take more than casual observation to realize that one’s News Feed is not a raw, chronological steam of all the posts by all of one’s friends and Liked Pages. Facebook uses what it calls EdgeRank to determine News Feed placement and calculates it based on:

Affinity between the viewing user and item creator, using factors such as frequency of contact.

Weight of edge type; a comment, for example, may have more weight than a Like.

Time decay — how long ago the item was created.

This is in addition to, on average, your brand page competing for attention against 90 other pages and 130 friends, which are appearing in users’ News Feeds.